How to Fix Your Problems Faster

In an earlier article (How to Get Exactly What You Want), I mentioned that problems are absolutely inevitable in life, especially so for the kind of people who want to take a proactive approach to improving themselves and their situation. The challenge I touched on was that the impact of those problems hinges on your expectations around what the problem means – whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

If you expect your problem to be a “bad thing” – in other words, a situation that’s just going to hold you back and cause trouble, it’s probably not likely to be one that gets fixed very quickly at all. You’ll have so many negative feelings associated to the problem that you’ll find yourself wanting to avoid dealing with it as much as possible, which ironically tends to not only make the problem bigger, but often spawns new problems as a result.

The problem here revolves around the word “problem” itself – or at least how we come to think about what they are. When you saw this headline, what was the meaning you associated to the word “problem?” Did you think of a few issues in your life that are causing you trouble? Did you hope that this article would help you deal with the stress a little easier?

It’s pretty likely that you did, since the title of this article itself is a “loaded” title. “How to Fix Your Problems Faster” implies that something is broken or not working out right, and needs to be fixed. While in a sense that may be true, it’s not necessarily the perspective that’s going to put you in the best frame of mind to deal with the issue.

Seeing your problems as a difficulty to be overcome makes things, well, more difficult than they need to be. In fact, it may make it seem impossible to “fix,” if you’re viewing the problem as being big enough (at least in your own head). And when you make things more difficult on yourself, you’re not going to get resolution on them very quickly.

But what if you could take all of the negative emotion and depression out of dealing with your “problems?” You can, but it involves deciding that you’re going to change your definition about what a problem is in the first place. A quick look at the dictionary gives two basic definitions for the word “problem”:

• A question to be considered, solved, or answered
• A situation, matter, or person that presents perplexity or difficulty

Note the huge difference here. The second definition is what you’re most likely to think of when you hear the word “problem.” Words like perplexity and difficulty don’t make things easier on you – they just put you at a disadvantage from the start.

But look at the first definition: A question to be considered, solved, or answered. That’s a perspective that fits more in line with your math class in high school. Your teacher gives you some math “problems,” and you solve them. They may be perplexing or difficult, but you solve them anyway, usually with a lot less stress than you feel working on your own personal “problems.”

Here’s the interesting thing, though – when you sat in class staring at a math quiz, you had a very valuable piece of leverage on your side: You knew that there was a specific solution to the problem. No matter how difficult the problem might have been, you never had any doubt that there was an answer to it (whether you knew it or not). So all you had to do was wrack your brain trying to uncover what that magic number was.

This concept has everything to do with your ability to solve the other “problems” in your life quickly. Think about it – if you have doubts that you can come up with a solution to your problem, that will sap the speed and intensity at which you apply yourself to getting it resolved. You might lose heart when faced with the fear that the problem is too big for you to handle.

But if you have a clear, unshakable expectation that a perfect (or at least useful enough) solution is out there, waiting to be uncovered, that will transform the way you attack the situation. You’ll become more motivated, because now it’s a treasure hunt, or a jigsaw puzzle … it’s just something you have to wrangle with until – inevitably – you figure it out and resolve the situation.

And just think of the word “resolve.” For a moment. To resolve a problem is simply to “re-solve” it. If you imagine that the solution is out there – that it’s been figured out before – you can have an easier time getting to it. You have more faith that you will find it, and you have more motivation to find that answer much, much faster than if you just wandered around waiting for something to happen.

This isn’t just positive thinking – it’s realistic thinking. It’s a rare problem that doesn’t have any solution – and your problems surely have at least one acceptable solution. It’s your job to believe it’s there, and to dig for it, never losing hope that you’ll find it.

Three decades of experience have shown me that it’s not what you hope for in life that’s what you get – it’s what you strongly expect that ends up happening. In other words, you have to assume that you’re going to eventually find the answer you need. Don’t be surprised how incredibly well this works when you try it.

What also makes this whole process easier is to proactively decide what the problem means to you in the first place. It can either be something to hinder you, or to make you stronger. If you choose to look at it as the latter, you’re going to have a much easier – and faster – time resolving it. But that’s a topic for another article.

So decide ahead of time that you’re going to assume every problem you have is just a question whose answer you will inevitably uncover. Drill it into your mind until you get the results you want. You’ll thank yourself for it.